[phscguy]

It doesn't solve it. The action at a distance is not a problem with quantum theory. This is because it both is predicted by quantum theory and also observed in experiment. It is a fact of nature and must be accepted. Entanglement does not violate special relativity, and QFT happily merges both special relativity and quantum mechanics into one theory without issue.

[yourenotsmart]

"It's a fact of nature and must be expected" is the Copenhagen interpretation. Which is well-known to be incomplete and basically referred to as the "shut up and calculate" interpretation.

The issue still remains.

[boublepop]

No, there is no issue. And the Copenhagen interpretation isn’t just “shut up and calculate” even though people may humorously refer to it as such.

Basically what we have is that if you had a model of reality where small invisible angels tug at the feet of people and thereby cause gravity, if I come along with a Newtonian model of gravity, then you can’t dismiss my theory because “It doesn’t explain the angels!”

Classically you want to assume that there are small local particles traveling along always in one specific position with one specific speed. QM instead postulates that this is not the case, but that reality can accurately be described based on probability wave distributions that when we do the math accurately predict your particle observations. But does so without explaining “the angels” and without bridging what you perceive as a gap between localized classical particles being the ground truth and what QM postulates. But the incorrect notion of localized particles behaving classically was never a universal truth that we have to include. It was just an incorrect model that seems to give us correct predictions in some but not all cases. QM now gives us both the same predictions when they were correct, but also correct predictions in all the cases where it fails.

[codethief]

Physicist here. I don't understand to what exactly "the angels" are supposed to refer here. Could you elaborate?

[yourenotsmart]

It seems it's some arbitrary strawman, so the overall point is my question about how we interpret the apparent waveform collapse is stupid by implication.

[yourenotsmart]

You spent a lot of time mocking the idea of strawman gravity angels and zero time explaining when the waveform function collapses and why this happens seemingly FTL.

[madhadron]

Wave function collapse is a convenience for calculation. There is, as far as I know, no reason to think it is real.

[yourenotsmart]

The wave function collapse is quite real in that before measurement a particle interferes with itself and exists in a superposition, and after measurement it doesn't interfere with itself and is not in a superposition (from our perspective, at least).

Does the wave function collapse, or we get entangled with a specific outcome, or something else happens is subject to debate and is the substance of my question.

But "it acts as a wave, then acts as a specific point in space" part is quite real as it's what we observe in experiments.

[vadansky]

My high school science teacher explained it well with something a long the lines of "You can't grog it since you're big and stupid". Technically even normal measurement is action at a distance since we're collapsing a wave function that covers an area into a small point instantaneously. In entanglement the wave function is just spread out even further, but if we already accept wave functions over areas for particles it's not that big a stretch. Problem is that it obviously doesn't jive with what we have experience with everyday as big stupid people.

[yourenotsmart]

The issue of waveform collapse is fundamentally different than "it collapses". The fact it collapses is the easy part. The hard part is why it collapses simultaneously for two particles which can't communicate at the same(ish) moment due to light speed limitations.